


Disinvolvement

by fajrdrako



Category: The Professionals
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-28
Updated: 2015-04-28
Packaged: 2018-03-26 05:02:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3838096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fajrdrako/pseuds/fajrdrako
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ann Holly finds herself with a problem. His name is Bodie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Disinvolvement

25th of June

Dear Ray,

I am not writing to dredge up painful memories or, goodness knows, to rekindle anything. I did not write to you before, because I was arid. I feared my feelings, your feelings, the consequences… But perhaps enough time has passed that this is no longer a danger. I still owe you an explanation.

I will understand if you throw away this letter without reading it.

My work in New York goes well. I am happy. I even have a new boyfriend, more or else. Not like you. No one is like you. He works in graphic design. I am happy. My work goes well. I am respected and needed. You know how that feels. I may even settle here, to eventually have two-point-five children and go to PTA meetings. I have learned to talk about 'elevators' and 'suspenders' and to eat pastrami on rye.

Things would have been very different if we were together, I know.

It was not just the issue of trust that made me leave you. Or your work for CI5. I let that stand as an explanation, knowing it was only the tip of the iceberg. The legacy of my father is a sore point -- that was true enough. All my life I have lived with the shame of his crimes. I would like to tear his blood out of my body, denouncing all his doings. If it were truly this relationship which made our marriage impossible, I would want to see him dead.

The problem wasn't that you thought I was working for him, or with him. I know it was necessary for you to prove my lack of involvement to Cowley and to Bodie. You had to be above suspicion -- and so did I, as your fiancée. I resented that because it was another way my bloody father was interfering in my life, however much I disavowed him. I was furious with you, with CI5, and most of all with my father for being what he was and making it all necessary.

I didn't leave you because of that, angry though I was. I left you because --

Oh god, this is so difficult to say. You see, I don't know what you know now and what you don't. I don't know how things stand. In the months since I left England so much might have happened -- or not. Are you even alive? Thousands of miles away from you I lie awake, hoping you are not dead from a killer's bullet. Fearing that my father, or men like my father, might kill you before you can kill them.

I didn't mean to say anything like that. Let me start again.

When we first met I hated it that you were a policeman. Or not a policeman, a CI5 operative. I hated men who worked for or against the law. I've always wanted nothing to do with it, because of my father, and because I saw what it's like -- never knowing from day to day if you would even survive to the next one.

I suppose we are always drawn to what we dread most, or hate is close to love, or something like that, because the things I hated about you were also the things I loved. Your courage, your honesty.

Then you turned out to be so funny and clever and you loved all the right things -- good plays and music. You didn't even mind reading poetry with me. You were interested in my work. You respected my work -- have you any idea how rare that is in a man? 

We were together for so short a time, only a few weeks. Those weeks shine brighter in my memory than all the rest of my life. Loving you taught me to understand things about myself I had never imagined, and in that time I knew you better than people I have known for years. Does love give a person insight? The intensity of the experience taught me more than years at university. Loving you changed me. I learned to see things I couldn't have seen before. This was why, on so shallow an acquaintance, I was able to see what Bodie was going through.

I remember when we were reading Yeats and you said, 'Bodie likes that one.' You'd heard him quote it. I was surprised, because I had the impression your Bodie was a mindless thug. I should have known better. Your partner wouldn't be like that, not in CI5.

Ray, I really didn't know what to make of him. He was charming to me and I hated him. He gave up on being charming for your sake (it was always just for your sake) and settled for cold civility. Did he guess why I hated him on sight? It took a while for me to understand it myself.

By that time you'd told me all about him. You told me more than you thought you did. You couldn't tell me anything about your work but even so his name cropped up all of the time. I was glad you worked with someone whom you liked so much.

No, I must be honest. At first I was glad. Then I was jealous.

Silly, wasn't it? I tried to argue myself out of it. What was there to be jealous of? He was your partner, I was going to be your wife. He was part of your professional life while I was part of your personal life. Easy compartments, with no need for overlap. I was the one who got to sleep with you. I was the one who could hold you at night and share your hopes and fears and do silly household chores with you. Potentially even raise a family. I would be part of your life, he would only be part of your work.

That was how it seemed to my rational mind. Luckily, I knew better.

I knew your work _was_ your life. I knew that the professional and the personal went together for you. I knew that your rapport with Bodie was deep in your psyche, even if you didn't guess, or couldn't analyse it. Cowley knew.

Bodie tried to accept me with good grace, but I could feel his resistance. Then I realised that he would do anything for you. He would accept whatever you needed him to accept, without question. It all started to become clear. You told me about how you used to share dates with him, how you spent your free time together. I know how it is between partners -- you have to depend on each other for your lives. It was clear you had been a very effective partnership. It showed in everything you said about Bodie, even when you were tearing him to shreds.

Yes, I was jealous of Bodie. I was ashamed of it. That was shy I was slow to realise that _he_ was jealous of _me_.

He had to hid it. I suppose he might have been ashamed of it, too, which is why he tried not to let it show That was why it hurt him when Cowley made him spy on me. He didn't want to feel he'd cut me out because he didn't want me to be with you, all the more so if it were true. He was trying to be honourable -- to you, to Cowley, for CI5's sake. He thought you didn't want him. He didn't see the side of you that I did. He was blind to the thing he most wanted: your love.

I remember the bullets whizzing by, that day I first saw you both. It was a world you and he belonged in, and my father, too, on the other side of the guns.

I couldn't share that with you.

It didn't talk me long to see it all. He loves you, Ray. Please don't laugh -- I know you won't, but don't dismiss it either -- love is a complex thing and I don't pretend to understand all its ins and outs even where I am concerned, let alone other people, and I don't know Bodie well.

But I've been in that place, where he was. I know what it feels like to love you. Whatever I felt, he was feeling the same. I'm not just talking of the interdependence of working partners, or some noble selflessness. I'm talking about deep, human, physical love that seeps through every level of feeling. With no possibility of marriage, no hope of his love being returned by you, no expectations of even living a long life in your partnership, he loved you silently and proudly. Taking it day by day, I imagine, valuing what he had of you while he had it.

And you were oblivious to his passion.

Naive? Not you. You just didn't think about it, didn't know how to be observant where he was concerned. That was _your_ weak spot. He'd have given you the sky and you took it for granted because that's the way he always was with you. You thought it was just his nature. Only with you, Ray. Only with you. He's a strong and independent man and he built his life around you and you hadn't even noticed.

So there I was, walking into your life like a hurricane and he was being blown aside with all the rest of the debris. He hated it, but he took it with all the bland acceptance he could manage. Anything for your happiness. Anything.

Except I made you unhappy, didn't I? Because in so many ways, you had to choose between me and CI5. Law enforcers don't make easy husbands. As the child of a criminal, I cast doubt on your integrity. And I came between you and Bodie.

As if anything could come between you and Bodie.

That was the worst. That if -- when -- I married you, you would have to choose between me and him. Otherwise you'd be torn apart like Solomon's baby.

You know what was worse still? I knew when it came to that, you wouldn't choose me. If ever consciously you realised what your choice really was -- I didn't stand the ghost of a chance. If you stayed with me it would be out of duty. If you knew what your choice really as, it would be him. Him all the way.

O my love, that was why I couldn't let it come to that. I couldn't bear to face the time when you realised you belonged with Bodie, not me. Or even worse, I couldn't bear to see you live the long years never knowing, denying to yourself what was there but unrecognised. Something that meant so much more to you than what you had unknowingly settled for.

That was why I left. Not because I don't love you enough, but because he loves you more.

You need to know what.

The rest is between you and Bodie, and none of my business.

I hope you will be happy together.

Yours truly,

Ann

**Author's Note:**

> First published in _Homosapien The Filth_ , 10 October 1997


End file.
